title: Reliability and validity of the Toronto Structured Interview for Alexithymia in a mixed clinical and nonclinical sample from Italy.
abstract: The reliability and validity of the Toronto Structured Interview for Alexithymia (TSIA) have been demonstrated in previous studies with English-speaking community and psychiatric samples and a German-speaking psychiatric sample. The aim of this study was to evaluate the psychometric properties of the TSIA in a mixed clinical and nonclinical sample from Italy. The original English version of the TSIA was translated into Italian and administered, along with the 20-item Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20), to 80 healthy subjects, 69 medical outpatients, and 62 psychiatric outpatients. Eighty-one videotaped interviews were used for assessing the interrater reliability. Confirmatory factor analysis supported the hierarchical, four-factor structure of the TSIA obtained in previous studies, with four lower-order factors nested within two higher-order latent factors. The TSIA also demonstrated internal and interrater reliability, and concurrent validity with the TAS-20. The results support the use of the TSIA to assess alexithymia especially when a multimethod approach to measurement is possible.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Palermo, Palermo, Italy. vincenzocaretti@tiscali.it
authors.forename: Vincenzo
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Caretti
authors.forename: Piero
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Porcelli
authors.forename: Luigi
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Solano
authors.forename: Adriano
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Schimmenti
authors.forename: R Michael
authors.initials: RM
authors.lastname: Bagby
authors.forename: Graeme J
authors.initials: GJ
authors.lastname: Taylor
mesh_terms: D000342:Affective Symptoms / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000453:epidemiology*; D005163:Factor Analysis, Statistical; D006801:Humans; D007407:Interviews as Topic; D007558:Italy / Q000453:epidemiology; D011569:Psychiatric Status Rating Scales; D011594:Psychometrics / Q000379:methods*; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D013223:Statistics as Topic; D014175:Translating; D014743:Videotape Recording